playing with audacity

Uilleann Pipes
1

No, this isn’t a reference to my cheeky piping style. :smiley: I just was messing with the Audacity audio recorder and have one little problem. When I record something the audio level is very low. When I tried to use the windows audio recorder the playback would be so low you couldn’t hear it. Audacity is slightly better, but to hear the playback, I have to have the gain all the way to the right and my speakers much higher than if I was just playing an Mp3. Everything is set so high that you can hear an audible background hiss. Also, it really doesn’t sound like it’s recording very well. The pipes sound quite poor on playback (regardless of my playing). Any ideas how I might improve the situation?

2

You might possibly have an impedence mismatch between the inputs on your sound card and the type of mic you are using. It can be very difficult to find out what the specs are for a PC sound card, but I guess that you may need a mic pre-amp for the type of mic you have.

djm

3

Depending on your OS and a million other factors…

  1. Plug the mic into the “Line In” input on your audio card.
  2. Double click on the volume icon in your icon try (PC?)
  3. Click “Options”.
  4. Click “Recording” and “OK”.
  5. Adjust the volume controls until the levels are right without distortion.

If “Line In” doesn’t work try the “Mic” input.

Hope that helps?!?!?!

Patrick.

4

What microphone are you using?

5

I’m glad Audacity was brought up again. I am trying to use it with my minidisc mic (1/8th inch jack) plugged into an ibook running MacOS 9.2. Doesn’t seem to work. But then again, I cannot guarantee I know what I am doing :blush:

6

Another option(s) work fine for me:

  1. Hardware:
    I can use a +20dB “boost” for my mic-in at the soundcard options. That helps when I use one of my small bagpipes. Maybe you have something similar.

  2. Audacity:
    After your recording select the whole track and go to ‘Effect’ and then ‘Normalize…’. This will increase the amplitude and thus also the volume of your recorded piece.

7

It sounds like you have your microphone plugged into your line-in input. Microphones usually output very small voltages, like 0.05V, whereas line-in ports expect something like 0.5 volts.

You should probably have a mic port, if not you can get amplifiers fairly cheaply from most electronic-type places.

Tommy, I would try the audacity website for troubleshooting MacOS issues - I think Mac support only happened fairly recently and is focused on OS X, so you might well have a new bug all to yourself.

Cheers,
Calum